Category Archives: Contemporary Ballet/Dance

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2016: A Year in the Life of Ballet

AIB-art-for-JanAs the old year passes, I thought a look back at some of this year’s highlights with some of the major ballet companies (and not so major) would be a fitting way to look at where we’ve been and look forward to where we’re going. Below are 10 of my picks for a brief look at the world in ballet for 2016.

Starting with the Australian Ballet and in their own words:  “A butterfly flapped its wings … and unleashed a hurricane year of dance that took us inside, outside and upside down; onstage, offstage and all around. Astonishing physical feats, elegant worlds of enchantment: this was our 2016.”

And a look at New York City Ballet’s 2016-2017 Season:

English National Ballet’s 2016 production of Swan Lake:

The Los Angeles Ballet celebrated their 10 year anniversary in 2016 with this documentary:

Several notable Nutcracker productions… The English National Ballet and The Joffrey Ballet Chicago:

World Ballet Day 2016:

The Bauhaus Ballet (aka the Triadic Ballet) turned 100 this year:

And you are never too old to dance or to live your dream…

Happy 2017 Everyone!

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The Green Table – an Anti-war Ballet

Maximiliano Zomosa and Trinette Singleton; courtesy of www.joffreymovie.com

Maximiliano Zomosa and Trinette Singleton; courtesy of www.joffreymovie.com

I just happened to be reading Eliza Minden’s blog post from earlier this year:  Desert Island Dances and she so eloquently writes about one of my all-time favorite contemporary ballets:  “The Green Table”.

I had the incredible good fortune, when I was a kid growing up in the sixties, to see The Joffrey Ballet perform this ballet, when the touring company came through my hometown. Wow — I was captivated. And, the cast included the incomparable Maximiliano Zomosa as Death – a role he became famous for. I was enthralled – of all the ballets I saw Joffrey perform, this one sticks in my mind the most. And, I thought, how appropriate in this time of yet more peace negotiations (this time with Iran) — how appropriate to write about it – and the statement the ballet makes – that war is, well, ultimately pointless.

Here are more viewpoints about the ballet – gathered from around the web – with history of how it was created:

From Eliza Minden, The Barre Flies:

“My own picks:  Kurt Jooss’s The Green Table. The ultimate anti-war ballet, as relevant and necessary today as it was at its premiere in 1932. A stark stage; scary, grotesque costumes; simple, legible steps relentlessly repeated to frightening effect; an unforgettable characterization of Death  — The Green Table hits with such force it almost knocks the wind out of you. During the Vietnam War it inspired a New York audience to follow the dancers out of the theater and into the street to protest. How many dances can do that? If I’m stuck on a desert island it might be consoling to know I’m far from the horrors of war and human folly.”

And from numeridanse.tv:

“The Green Table was created in 1932 for the “Concours international de chorégraphie” in Paris, in which Jooss had been invited to participate. The originality of the piece won him the first prize and marked an important step in his career.

Choreographed in 1932, between two great conflicts, The Green Table is a sort of generic war, a set of circumstances that produce the same result no matter where or when they are played out. So Death bears the combined iconographic attributes.

In 1932, looking out through the thickening hedges of Nazism, Jooss takes a less visionary path. The Green Table is concerned neither with the individual’s struggles and redemption, nor with working out a nobler fate for mankind. Jooss dramatizes the way destructive impulses are released, and shows us the consequences. His moral position is unimpeachable, and he drives home his lesson in a series of stark images. Each scene works a variation on the same theme, like the 41 woodcuts in Hans Holbein’s The Dance of Death (5). The idea is that Death becomes everyone’s partner, effectively seducing them into his dance on the same terms by which they lived their lives. No decisive action, change, or resolution is suggested, and in framing the Dance of Death with the stalemated parentheses of a diplomatic conference, Jooss seems to say none can be expected. The expressionists found the Dance of Death.

Through archetypal characters Jooss revisualizes human life as a function of a larger cosmology, an enduring and spiritual sphere where perhaps even war and death can be seen in a more comprehensible scale. Undiluted essences of natural behavior, these characters are stripped of temporality and individual preference. Today, even as we feel detached from their obvious artificiality, we recognize ourselves in them, in some epic form. People will still be able to understand them in a hundred years.”

The Green Table:  The Introduction through The Farewells

 

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A Day in the Life of Ballet

copyright The San Francisco Ballet

courtesy of The San Francisco Ballet

Something really momentous is happening in the world of ballet starting tomorrow:  the very first, continuous streaming, 20 hours of live ballet from 5 of the world’s greatest ballet companies. Respectively, The San Francisco Ballet, The Royal Ballet, The Australian Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, and The Bolshoi Ballet are giving us a 4 hour view into the lives of each company — from warm-up class, to rehearsal, to performance. Streaming starts in the evening of Tuesday, September 30th at 7pm (PDT in the USA), starting with The Australian Ballet. Below are portions of the event press release and below that more information on the schedule and how to access the live streaming.

“The first ever World Ballet Day will see an unprecedented collaboration between five of the world’s leading ballet companies. This online event will take place on Wednesday 1 October (Tuesday, Sept. 30 at 7pm PDT for USA) when each of the companies will stream live behind the scenes action from their rehearsal studios.

Starting at the beginning of the dancers’ day, each of the five ballet companies – Australian Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, The Royal Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada and San Francisco Ballet – will take the lead for a four hour period streaming live from their headquarters starting with the Australian Ballet in Melbourne.  The live link then passes across time zones and cultures from Melbourne to Moscow to London to Toronto to San Francisco.

The live streaming will take viewers on a journey into the rarely seen backstage lives of ballet dancers.  This unusual access will throw a spot light on the differences in style between the five companies as they follow a very similar routine but approach choreography and performance in the ways that have made them unique on the world stage.  Starting with morning class to warm up the body with different exercises, moving on to rehearsals for their upcoming performances the day will be a celebration of dance; the athleticism and unparalleled dedication of all those involved in creating a world-class ballet company.

Viewers will be able to engage and interact with dancers, choreographers and coaches who live and breathe ballet every day of their working lives, asking questions throughout the day as well as having the opportunity to contribute by submitting a film of themselves doing a pirouette wherever they are in the world.  These will be edited into a film celebrating the worldwide appeal of dance.

The day’s streaming will be repeated on YouTube in full so that viewers around the world can catch up on any parts of the day they missed.  Edited highlights will then be made available for further viewing.”

Where to Watch

The entire 20-hour live stream event will be available on this page, sfballet.org/worldballetday or by visiting SFB’s YouTube Channel.

Schedule (all times Pacfic Daylight Time – PDT)

The Australian Ballet starts September 30th at 7pm
The Bolshoi starts September 30th at 11pm
The Royal Ballet starts October 1st at 3am
The National Ballet of Canada starts October 1st at 7am
The San Francisco Ballet starts October 1st at 11am
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Is it Dance? Is it Art? Does it Matter?

Courtesy of The Barre Flies

Courtesy of The Barre Flies

The May blog comes from “The Barre Flies” and in particular, this month is written about the Pilobolus Dance Theatre — always one of my favorite dance troupes. The writing credits go to Eliza Minden of Gaynor/Minden. Read on:

“My neighborhood is so buff and body-conscious that even the dogs wear muscle shirts. Chiseled, pumped-up physiques are commonplace here in Chelsea, as are the many gyms where such bodies are created with arduous daily workouts, ever-more esoteric equipment, and precisely formulated, vitamin-fortified smoothies. But when Pilobolus comes to the Joyce they bring bodies — both male and female — that put the gym-rats to shame. These bodies not just impressive to look at, they possess breathtaking flexibility and balance skills. Moreover, unlike my neighbors (and their dogs), they wear their physiques lightly. Onstage they are utterly self-effacing — like the greatest ballet dancers they make it look effortless and graceful.

Do they cross-train? Lift weights? Swing kettle bells? Is there some company class that builds and maintains such strength? Not at all. What the Pilobolus dancers do is just that demanding. Their zen-like serenity onstage belies the difficulty of their work. Like ballet dancers, they make it look so easy that no one appreciates how hard it really is.

In my favorite pieces they use each other’s bodies as human levers to create fantastic living sculptures that merge and cleave. They rely in part on a weight sharing technique that can be found in other forms of dance but that Pilobolus developed and theatricalized in its own way.

Pilobolus pictureI spoke with Beth Lewis, who toured with the company for five years and who still performs with it from time to time. “Weight sharing with a man is difficult because the amount he pushes is the amount the woman has to push back.” And referring to their signature cantilevers, “Also, the body doesn’t rest in space at a 45° angle without any effort. You have to engage everything in your body to make this happen, all while making it look pretty. It’s insanely difficult.”

Okay, so it’s incredibly hard. But is it really dance? Is it art? Does that matter? “I think everything is dance,” said Lewis, “walking down the street can be a dance. We can take pedestrian ideas and make them into an interesting work that we can call dance. We make shapes out of people while moving through seamless transitions. We move together as a unit to create something sculptural and beautiful to look at. “

Dance was only part of Lewis’s athletic training. She was a competitive swimmer and gymnast, and a long-time practitioner of tai kwon do. As a college dance major she did extensive aerial work with trapeze and silk. Dance is not necessarily a requirement for becoming a member of Pilobolus, though many do have some dance training. According to Lewis the requirement is having something to contribute to a collaborative process that’s based on improvisation and play. The diversity of their backgrounds just enriches the work.

“With Pilobolus you’re not seeing a show you’re experiencing art—experiencing physicality, theater, and process. You’re seeing what each dancer has gone through to create that piece.”

Lewis now teaches some of the physical skills required of being a “Pil” to a clientele ranging in age from 14 to 81. She prefers “movement specialist” rather than “trainer” as her job description. Her workouts look like play but result in increased strength, mobility, balance, and as she puts it, “walking through life with a little more grace.” (They also result in exhaustion and soreness in previously unknown muscles.) She helps clients achieve kinesthetic awareness — knowing where the body is in space — through Pilobolus-based weight sharing along with more conventional devices. “Anything you can do to make it trickier, and to make your environment more unstable, makes your body work harder to create that stability.”

Over the past forty years Pilobolus has created a body of work that is by turns exhilarating, provocative, goofy, and hauntingly beautiful. They’ve become more polished — some would say slick — but the work retains its quality of having originated in playful group improvisation. It’s harder on the dancers to work this way: there’s no rest and no familiar structure of tendus and pliés to fall back on.

Most pioneering dance companies, once they’ve hit 40 and established themselves, would consider codifying their technique and creating a vocabulary for their steps and positions. I asked Lewis if Pilobolus should do so, “No,” she says, “that’s not the way Pilobolus rolls.”

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Ballet in Crisis?

Ballet wallpaper dancer in b_w cropdAlthough we live in an ever-changing world, do we cross the line when something that has been traditionally studied as a fine art — which comes from the soul — becomes a repetitive study of technique only? Increasingly, ballet is being seen as a competition for the best technique, rather than the fine art of “artistry”.  Reprinted for this month’s blog, comes an article from The New Republic titled:  Ballet Is In Crisis Because It’s Turning Into a Sport — a thought provoking article discussing how ballet competitions are playing a role in this. I invite you to read and comment: “The International Olympic Committee recently voted to restore wrestling to the Olympic Games in 2016. One activity that’s never been put before the committee: ballet. Despite its physical similarities to gymnastics, ice-skating and ballroom dance, most ballet dancers would bristle at the suggestion that it’s a sport—and yet, many ballet teachers and directors have embraced Olympic-style competitions in which aspiring dancers compete for gold, silver and bronze medals, scholarships, contracts and even cash. “The curious thing about dance now, and ballet in particular,” Jennifer Homans recently argued in The New Republic, “is that it has taken the form but left the feeling. Artists today seem more attached to form than perhaps ever before—wedded to concept, abstraction, gymnastic moves and external appearance.” This dearth of feeling might have something to do with the growth of competition culture, in which artistry is scored and treated as just another variable. For instance, at the Youth America Grand Prix, the biggest annual student competition, artistry and technique are equally weighted, with each evaluated on a 100-point scale. And some students at many of the world’s top ballet schools, like the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet Theatre and London’s Royal Ballet School, are recruited through competitions like the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP), the New York International Ballet Competition, and the Prix de Lausanne. While ballet companies worldwide have been struggling to attract audiences and donors, competitions have been growing ever bigger and more commercial. The last few decades have seen increasing participation and corporate sponsorship, as well as the founding of new competitions like YAGP in 1999 and the World Ballet Competition (WBC) in 2007. At YAGP, the biggest student competition, over 5,000 participants— some as young as nine—vie for scholarships, cash, and even modeling contracts. YAGP was further popularized by the well-received 2011 documentary First Position, which follows six contestants as they make their way from the regional preliminaries to the finals in New York. Needless to say, some traditionalists object. “I don’t like the idea of that kind of competition,” said Carol Sumner, who danced as a soloist at New York City Ballet under George Balanchine. “To be a great dancer doesn’t mean to have a great technique. What you have to be is interesting. Mr. B [Balanchine] said he chose dancers that are interesting to look at, he chose dancers that he wanted to see everyday—not necessarily the strongest ones.” But being interesting to look at won’t get you far when you’re being scored on the height of your extensions and the number of pirouettes you can turn.

(RELATED: America’s Orchestras Are in Crisis, Too)

Competitions may be especially detrimental for young dancers, who haven’t had a chance to develop a sense of artistry. “Kids sitting in the audience, they get wowed when they see a kid do four or five pirouettes or see their leg go over their head,” said Susan Jaffe, Dean of Dance at University of North Carolina School of the Arts and former Ballet Mistress at American Ballet Theatre. “This is pure physical talent and that, of course, is not where the art of ballet lives.” The rise in student ballet competitions might have something to do with the growing competitiveness of all children’s activities, from chess tournaments to spelling bees. Little League baseball—whose “world series” is now broadcast on ESPN—was founded in 1939; North America’s first international ballet competition was organized 25 years later. In The Atlantic last month, Harvard sociologist Hilary Levey Friedman relates the rise of competitive children’s sports to the frenzy surrounding college admissions as students scramble to fill out the “awards” section on their college applications. TV shows like Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance, which have both been running since 2005, might also have played a role in normalizing dance contests. Homans and other critics and dancers lament that ballet is no longer the crowd-pleasing, exciting spectacle it was a century ago. “It is worth recalling that when Sleeping Beauty premiered in Russia in 1890, it was like watching Technicolor for the first time: controversial, visually overwhelming, a new way of seeing,” she writes. This is hard to imagine today; contemporary audiences consist disproportionately of dancers and ex-dancers. “Dancers in competitions are just pleasing each other, pleasing their peers, pleasing the judges,” said Sumner. “It’s kind of incestuous.” This is not to say that ballet is not inherently competitive. Dancers at every level compete constantly—for spots in summer programs and schools, for attention from teachers and directors, for roles and promotions. But there’s a difference between competitive rivalry and formalized competition. Homans writes that ballet today suffers from “too much athleticism” and a “fear of feeling.” What could be more likely to exacerbate the emphasis on technique than training dancers to please a panel of trained judges rather than a general audience?”

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Twenty Years of Ballet

reprinted from pointetilyoudrop.com

reprinted from pointetilyoudrop.com

This month’s blog — reprinted from pointetilyoudrop.com — is written by amateur dancer, Johanna from Helsinki, Finland:

“In January 1991, I took my first ballet class ever. It was love at first tendu. This month I’m celebrating my 20-year ballet anniversary. That is right, my math is not wrong. Not if I discount the three years when I did not dance at all. I wish I could undo the not-dancing, but at least I figured it out eventually. Ballet is where my heart is. I returned to class in 2006, and haven’t looked back since. Except for today, when I went rummaging in my old calendars/diaries. This is what I wrote down in January 1994: “After class Jill (my teacher) asked me when I was going to get myself pointe shoes. I told her that I was too old to go on pointe.” At the time, I was 24 years young. Can you believe it? It’s a good thing that dance keeps you young, or in my case, progressively younger.

It’s a cliche, but the years do fly by. Life rarely goes as planned (another cliche, sorry). This is why I’ve always appreciated the time-honored tradition of ballet. Over the years, the steps and positions have become familiar, the French understandable, the movement ingrained in both body and mind. Yet, there’s always change. For me, this is probably the best part of learning and dancing ballet. As long as I keep an open mind and never settle for less than my full potential, I keep moving on. That first class was my point of departure, and I’ve been dancing without a destination ever since. I like to think that I’m always halfway there. Because as an adult dancer, class itself is the beginning and end. For professional dancers, it’s all about the performance, dancing on stage in front of a real audience. For us, it’s mostly an imaginary audience behind the class mirror. We love to do the hard work, but it’s not payed work. Unless you count joy as the ultimate reward. I’m pretty sure that most of us adult dancers do just that. We dance because dance brings us joy.

Another reason why I never lost my love for dance: awesome teachers. I will skip the math on this one, but I do remember them all. Your first ballet teacher you never forget. If you are lucky, she’s the one who will instill a love and respect for the art. Jill Miller gave me a solid foundation to build on, and an understanding of how placement works. It was not the Vaganova-school that is so common here in Finland, but it was very safe on untrained adult joints and limbs. I loved her classes, the way she phrased the exercises to music, and the challenges she threw at us. “Move! Dance!” We were told to use the whole space, and not to hold back. “Don’t dance like you have a stick up your butt!” Or, somewhat more eloquent: “Be organic in your movement.” She was one of a kind. Strict, but caring. I’m happy that I got back to ballet and Jill’s classes before her untimely death in 2007.

You do not necessarily have to like your teacher, as long as you learn and enjoy the dancing. However, sometimes it can happen that the class just does not feel right, which has happened to me on occasion. It can be a simple matter of chemistry, or the lack thereof. I still took the classes, learned the steps and worked on my technique. But in the long run, the physical work alone is not enough. Like I wrote earlier, we are in it for the joy. If you enter class with a positive attitude, energy and focus, you should leave class feeling like a million bucks. Sweaty, energized and happy. Of course we all have bad days, certain insecurities and flaws… Nobody can be a perfect student all the time.

I also take classes where there’s almost no interaction between a student and teacher. You know, some teachers give a short warm-up barre and a dancey center, but hardly any personal feedback. That’s okay, especially when you get plenty of corrections elsewhere. In those classes, I often think less about technique and focus on the dancing alone. Over the past 20 years, I’ve learned that both ways work for me, as long as one outweighs the other. In any case, variety in school and style is a wonderful thing. You get fresh perspectives, familiar corrections are rephrased (= eureka!), and you get to work on new exercises and enchaînements.

I have learned from every teacher I’ve ever had. Some focus more on pirouettes, others have awesome petit allegro or a very lyrical adagio. There’s been Vaganova, French School, Cecchetti, RAD, Balanchine and Bournonville, and a mix of schools, styles and teachers’ personal experiences. Some have been wonderful, some a little scary, others easy-going and very nice. Most have been motivating, even inspiring. All have been professional, skilled and knowledgeable. Many have been very important to me. Still are.

When I’m in class, I need to feel both challenged but also safe to make mistakes. I like to be pushed, but preferably in a positive and encouraging manner. I like to get feedback, lots of corrections and guidance. Some praise is nice too. I was already lucky when I started classes with Jill. I can’t think of a better teacher for that time in my life. I’m even more fortunate now. Since I started taking class with my current teacher, Marie-Pierre Greve, so much has changed. Ballet feels like a new experience, yet again. I love Madame’s elegant and beautiful dancing, her generous and attentive style of teaching, her keen eye for the tiniest of detail (which can make a huge difference), the emphasis on quality and artistry, the positive and encouraging class atmosphere, the real work we do and the fun we have in class. It’s pure and undiluted ballet joy!

Where ballet is concerned, I consider myself a very lucky person. Between that first class and the latest one, there has been a lot of dancing: thousands and thousands of classes. So many wonderful and memorable experiences. Sure, there have also been injuries and struggles and breaks. But for the most part, it’s been all good. Amazing, in fact. I would not trade this experience for anything.”

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Marina Eglevsky – A Legacy of Dance, Part 1

Marina Eglevsky on the cover of Dance Magazine, January 1969.

Marina Eglevsky, born into ballet royalty, started dancing very early – almost as soon as she could walk. Her parents, Andre Eglevsky, premier danseur with George Balanchine’s American Ballet (which later became the New York City Ballet) and her mother, Leda Anchutina, also a soloist with NYCB, brought to her a legacy of dance that is a fascinating account. I had the great pleasure of interviewing her about her life – from her growing up years, being taught by George Balanchine, and on to when she took the spotlight in her own right as a dancer, first with the New York City Ballet, then onto Harkness Ballet and the Hamburg Ballet with John Neumeier, among others. Her father Andre is also credited with – if not the first – then surely the first in this country, of inviting amateur adults into his ballet classes at The Eglevsky Ballet school. What follows is Part 1 of my interview with Marina.

Q:  Marina, you are the daughter of Andre Eglevsky, widely regarded as the greatest male classical dancer of his generation, and you began studying ballet with George Balanchine and now stage his ballets for other companies. When did you start dancing? Where did your passion for dance come from?:

A:  I just started dancing, my parents were not really involved in whether I did or didn’t – but, once I was in it, then they became involved in how I was working in ballet.

By the age of 2 or 3 I was sitting around in rehearsals backstage. At that point, my father went on a major tour in Europe, and when he was rehearsing or busy – I would disappear and start just dancing somewhere – my mother said she would lose me all the time and to find me, would look for the crowd of people because I would be in the middle of the crowd dancing – I drew the crowd with my dancing.

My father had a performance to do on major network and was running around the studio and somehow I got into a Howdy Doody set and they whisked me away and put me in someone’s office. I remember sitting in this office and there was a pair of pointe shoes, they were really little – I just kept looking at them, and then the lady in the office gave them to me and I put those on and took Balanchine’s class in those shoes until they disintegrated and shredded.

I was allowed to take Balanchine’s class at a really young age and take company class, even though I hung underneath the barre, he would correct me. I was able to reach the barre and so he would teach me turnout, etc.  Everyday I came in with my father, and I would be in company class. By 5 or 6 they started to put me in Nutcracker and then I was more or less taking regular classes at the school and being involved in performing Nutcracker.  After various roles, eventually I grew too big for the party scene and auditioned for Clara and really wanted it, but I was too small for the costumes. I performed in Pulcinella up until 12 or 13 and by then I was a teenager and really questioned whether I wanted to continue in dance since I’d already put in a lot of time and I wanted to get more involved with regular school.

At that time, my father started his own company and school, (while still dancing for NYCB) – The Eglevsky Ballet – and out of his school he would do his own guesting appearances. At one of those guest appearances he had two heart attacks and that was end of his career so when he recovered, he went more into his own school, and Mr. Balanchine said “Please, I will help you with your school and your company and please come and work with my school” (SAB, School of American Ballet). I was around 12 at the time – it was a big change. I thought maybe I should stay around and go to school and be a doctor. I asked my parents what they thought – they said:  we don’t care. So that made me angry and I thought I’d  show them – so I decided to continue dancing. I went over to American Ballet Theatre (ABT) and focused in on a teacher there.

Eventually, Mr. Balanchine did take me into NYCB at 14 – and it was like a 2ndhome there – it was just part of the course. Yet, I was afraid to be only one kind of dancer, a Balanchine dancer – and, I was also under the shadow of my father – part of me wanted to get away from that and be on my own. Rebekah Harkness of the Harkness Ballet – had the kind of choreography I felt an affinity for and it was the kind of repertory I wanted to do – so, one day I went up to the director and asked to be in Harkness – and they ended up saying yes.

Q:  What was your experience like with Harkness – how long did you stay?

Marina with The Harkness Ballet.
Courtesy of Marina Eglevsky.

One of the 1st choreographers in Harkness was John Neumeier, and he’d expressed a great interest in me. At that time I was 15 or 16, and I didn’t understand the implications of a choreographer liking me, otherwise if I’d understood I would’ve stayed with Balanchine. While I was at Harkness, I married a dancer there which my parents were also against – after Harkness folded in the 70’s, we worked a little bit with Eglevsky Ballet and tried to heal and mend things with my parents.

After that, we were taken into Maurice Bejart’s company – we stayed with them until contracts started, and while we were waiting for them to begin, it didn’t feel right to me, but my husband was thrilled. Once I was married, my husband and I had a goal to stay together – which made it difficult to get a job. We went to Stuttgart, got a yes, but it didn’t come through, so then we went to ABT, I got a yes but not my husband, so I didn’t go. One day I was hanging around in ABT in the studios, and a man from the Royal Winnipeg Ballet was there, and asked if we wanted to be in the company, and they had this amazing repertory – like Harkness – so we said sure. So we went there – it was wonderful, one of the first choreographer’s that came to work with us was John Neumeier, and we worked with the Winnipeg company for awhile. John said he was starting a new company in Hamburg, Germany and “would you come to Hamburg?” We both said yes to joining Hamburg Ballet – John’s still there – (he was from Stuttgart, but branched off to the Hamburg Ballet.)

End of Part 1 – stay tuned for next month’s installment.

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100 Years of Le Sacre du printemps

New York Times Review
courtesy of Wikipedia

May 29, 1913 marked the premiere performance of Le Sacre du printemps, (the Rite of Spring), at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. This first performance is legendary for the sensation it caused and near riot. Originally composed as a “ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev‘s Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky, with stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich”. Now, 100 years later, the work continues to endure with many interpretations both orchestrally and in dance by many companies across the globe. And, “although designed as a work for the stage, with specific passages accompanying characters and action, the music achieved equal if not greater recognition as a concert piece, and is widely considered to be one of the most influential musical works of the 20th century” (quotes courtesy of Wikipedia).

From the original to contemporary, the three videos below start with a wonderful BBC documentary about the premiere performance. Interestingly, it brings out that the near riot in the audience was not spontaneous but that Diaghilev actually prepared the Parisians for 5 weeks before the premiere to hate this work and the resulting riot was exactly what Diaghilev had wanted.

Ballets Russe – Le Sacre du printemps, BBC documentary (pt 3 of 3)

 

Maurice Béjart, Béjart Ballet Lausanne, Le Sacre du printemps, 1970

 

Adonis Foniadakis, Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Le Sacre du printemps, 2013

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Psychology and Dance: Meet ‘Dr. Dancer’

As dancers, or aspiring dancers, a lot of us have experienced that tug between the desire of becoming a professional dancer and perhaps the more secure world of a 9 to 5 career position. And, some of us are lucky enough to combine both. Nadine Kaslow has done just that – combined both worlds. Here are excerpts from an article about Dr. Kaslow, (written by Elizabeth Landau, of CNN): “Psychology plus ballet: Meet ‘Dr. Dancer”.

Nadine Kaslow sits with one slender ivory leg dangling, the other tucked neatly under her dress with the heel of her beige pump facing up. These legs have supported her throughout her career as a dancer. But in her head, Kaslow struggled for years over whether to follow that path or her passion for psychology.

She eventually found a way to combine the two worlds, serving not only as a psychologist for the Atlanta Ballet, but also becoming a powerful force for providing accessible mental health care for disadvantaged women.

“I always wore a ballerina around my neck,” she said of the gold charm she’s had since age 13, which she wore Wednesday in her office at Emory University School of Medicine. “But I never talked about going to ballet. I just didn’t think I’d be taken seriously.”

Now, as the new president-elect of the American Psychological Association, Kaslow doesn’t worry about that anymore. Besides being an Emory professor and chief psychologist of Grady Health System, she is also the psychologist for the Atlanta Ballet, where some students call her “Doctor Dancer.”

Kaslow, 56, grew up in the Philadelphia area and started dancing when she was 3. She took classes in creative movement, which involved developing skills such as “prancing like a pony.”

Little Nadine knew she wanted to do something more than what the system had set out for her. She asked her mother who was the head of the school, so she could ask to learn real dance with the big kids. The boss told her she needed to be 5, but this didn’t deter her.

“I’d stand outside the class with the big kids and I would do it in the hallway,” she said. Finally, when she was 4, because of her persistence, she was allowed to start real ballet classes with 5-year-olds.

Choosing psychology

In high school and early college, Kaslow danced with the Pennsylvania Ballet. But when she applied to college, she wrote that she wanted to be a psychologist. It’s what her mother did, too, and she enjoyed reading books about psychological problems.

“I was one of those kids that, when other kids had problems, I was the one they’d come and talk to about their problems,” she said. “I really wanted to help people but I really wanted to understand through the human mind, human behavior and human relationships.”

During graduate school, she continued taking ballet classes. In her head, it was a tug of war over whether she truly wanted a career in psychology or in dance. The director of the Houston Ballet then offered her a choice: She could have a position in the company, if she lost 15 pounds.

Perhaps because of the body-consciousness of ballet, Kaslow remembers with ease how much she weighed at various points in her life. As a Ph.D. student, she said, she was already 12 pounds thinner than she is right now. On her frame, not quite 5 feet tall, an additional 15-pound loss would be dramatic.

“I knew at that point that that was not a healthy lifestyle choice,” she said. “I was old enough and I was out of the system enough that I was able to stop and say that was it. That was my defining moment.”

She got her doctoral degree in 1983 and headed to the University of Wisconsin for her internship and postdoctoral fellowship training

At the ballet

About five years ago, Kaslow started ballet classes at Atlanta Ballet Centre for Dance Education. She met the center’s director, Sharon Story, and the Atlanta Ballet’s artistic director John McFall. It turned out, there was a way to reconcile her passion for ballet with her career in psychology.

Kaslow became the Atlanta Ballet’s first resident psychologist, helping the students and professional dancers through wellness programming and psychotherapy.

“She keeps dancing and brings her knowledge and compassion to our dancers and students to pursue their lives and passions with strength, confidence, and healthy well beings,” Story said in an e-mail. “Nadine is tiny in stature and a huge brilliant gem to all of us at Atlanta Ballet.”

When Kaslow started working with dancers in her capacity as a psychologist, she thought eating disorders would be a huge problem. Instead, she’s found other issues are more prevalent:  Performance anxiety, balance between different activities and perfectionism.

Perfectionism in particular is a problem that Kaslow has struggled with herself, and something that she shares with some of the dancers she’s seen in therapy.

“I really talk to the dancers about, how do you think about doing your best, and being good enough, and what a realistic and attainable goal is, and I try to do that for myself as well,” she said.

The cultural norms of ballet are such that it’s hard to know when a dancer truly has an eating disorder, she said.

“When I weighed about 22 pounds less than I do now, I was told I looked like a hippopotamus,” she said. “The problem was that part of me believed them. But I look at myself now and I say, ‘Well, I don’t really look like a hippopotamus now, so I probably didn’t look like a hippopotamus 20 pounds less than this.’”

Kaslow sees many connections between the study of the mind and of human relationships.

“As a scientifically-minded psychologist, I build upon many of the qualities that served me and others well in the dance world — curiosity, persistence, patience, and a passion for the work,” she said. “As an educator, I know that when I am teaching dance or psychology, it is essential that I provide a facilitating environment that nurtures creativity, self-expression, self-acceptance, and a dedication to doing one’s best.”

Her advice to graduates, she said, would be:  “Follow your passions and your dreams. I wish I had gotten that message sooner, and that I didn’t feel like I had to choose (between dance and psychology) for so long.”

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Top 10 Dance Movies

With the popularity of top ten lists these days, that got me to thinking – why not dance movies? In researching this topic, I looked for other top 10 dance movie lists – 10 Dance Movies That Are Actually Worth Your Time and My Favorite Ballet Movies are notable for their picks.

I’ve compiled mine around two themes – that those chosen were (mostly) from popular film genre and that one or more of the actors in each film had classical dance training:

  1. An American in Paris:  my all time favorite with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, the famous 17 minute “An American in Paris” ballet with sets by Marc Chagall – features Gene Kelly and the film debut of a very young Leslie Caron. Can’t beat this film for the best combination of toe-tapping, sing-a-long music combined with wit, warmth and Oscar Levant (watch for his marvelous “Concerto in F” sequence).
  2. The Red Shoes:  based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, features Incredible and magical dance sequences starring the superb talents of Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann and Leonide Massine. A Classic.
  3. Singin’ in the Rain:  seems be at the top or near the top of everyone’s top ten dance movies – yes the famous routine featuring Gene Kelly “singin’ in the rain” is a not-to-be-missed favorite, but watch for his duet with Cyd Charisse in the “Broadway Melody” ballet sequence. With the ever-energetic Debbie Reynolds and smooth moves by Donald O’Connor.
  4. Daddy Longlegs:  another favorite and perhaps more obscure – Leslie Caron shot this a few years after American in Paris. Features wonderful ballet sequences with Fred Astaire and inventive musical scenes with songs and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Watch for the humorous Thelma Ritter.
  5. Blood Wedding:  a 1981 spanish film by Carlos Saura, featuring Antonio Gades and his company of flamenco dancers, in an adaptation of the Federica Garcia Lorca play.
  6. West Side Story:  the movie version of the legendary musical combines a superb story, choregraphy, dancing, music – starring Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, Natalie Wood, Russ Tamblyn, Richard Beymer. With music and lyrics by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, and the choregraphy of Jerome Robbins.
  7. The Band Wagon:  beautiful Cyd Charisse with Fred Astaire in this 1953 musical comedy.
  8. The Company:  this 2003 Robert Altman film, starring Neve Campbell (who trained at the National Ballet School of Canada before becoming an actress) – features the ups and downs in a year from the life of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. Also stars Malcolm McDowell and James Franco.
  9. Dirty Dancing:  the iconic 1980’s dance film, starring dancer and actor Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey (daughter of Joel Grey). With it’s blend of nostalgia, romance and “dirty” dancing, the electric chemistry between Swayze and Grey is why I keep coming back.
  10. Billy Elliot:  wonderful UK film featuring a young Jamie Bell in the title role. Nothing beats this for the sheer enjoyment of watching a youngster’s love of ballet win out against all odds in his quest  for acceptance into the Royal Ballet School. Julie Walters plays the ballet teacher who gives him his start.

I leave you with 3 clips from more films (and 1 variety show) that didn’t make my list, yet have great dance sequences in them.

The late great ballerina Maria Tallchief, performing as Anna Pavlova in “The Dying Swan” sequence from the Esther Williams film, Million Dollar Mermaid:

 

Cyd Charisse from Silk Stockings:

 

Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor – dancing together in a 1959 bit from a Gene Kelly TV special – watch for the grace and timing of this superb duo: